Many uncertainties surround the arrest last week (26 May) of Ratko Mladic, the wartime commander of Bosnian Serb forces who had evaded international justice for 16 years. Was the arrest staged to conceal some kind of deal under which Mladic surrendered? Were Mladic’s whereabouts known to the Serbian authorities all along, his arrest timed to blunt the impact of a negative report on Serbia’s co-operation with a United Nations tribunal? Who exactly protected the former general, and why did that protection cease?

But one thing is certain: the Serbian government now expects a reward from the European Union. Božidar Djelic, a deputy prime minister of Serbia, said on Monday (30 May) that the government’s aspiration is that the summit of member states’ leaders in December will grant Serbia the status of a EU candidate and fix a date – “hopefully in the spring of 2012” – for starting negotiations. “Today, we cleared our name and the name of all Serbs,” said Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, announcing the arrest.

‘Democratic maturity’

Many EU policymakers agree. Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister, said: “This is a test of great democratic maturity for Serbia, bringing it closer to Europe and the European Union, a process that Italy has strongly encouraged and that now needs to be accelerated further, without reservations.” Michael Spindelegger, Austria’s foreign minister, said: “Serbia has removed a significant obstacle on its path to EU membership”. Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister and a former Balkan envoy, said: “We can look at much brighter EU prospects for all of the western Balkans.”

The celebratory mood obscured that in the months before Mladic was captured, the Netherlands was the only EU member state willing to link the grant of candidate status to his arrest. “There were still some who doubted we were doing what we said we were doing [about catching Mladic]”, Djelic told European Voice, in an apparent reference to the Dutch government. Previously, Belgium, Denmark and the United Kingdom had succumbed to pressure from their EU peers and the United States – perhaps helped by the apparent futility of the search for Mladic – and dropped their insistence that Mladic be caught as a pre-condition for any progress towards membership of the EU.

A timeline

1942: Ratko Mladic is born in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Partisan father who is killed by Croat Fascists in 1945.

2006: EU suspends pre-accession talks with Serbia over failure to co-operate with ICTY.

2007: New coalition government begins arrests, transfers to ICTY,

EU resumes pre-accession talks.

2008: Karadžic is captured in Belgrade.

2009: Serbia applies for EU membership.

2011: Mladic is arrested in northern Serbia.

Dutch insistence

Diplomats confirm that Mladic’s capture was the result of Dutch insistence. The week before the arrest, Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, submitted his semi-annual report to the members of the UN Security Council. The report was far more negative than that of December 2010. This made it unlikely that the Dutch government would agree to let Serbia become a membership candidate in December, a core element in Tadic’s bid to win a general election next year. “That was the moment when Tadic had to move,” a senior member state diplomat said. “It’s evident that there is a link” between Mladic’s arrest and the Brammertz report, he said.

Last week’s arrest has removed one of the main obstacles Serbia faced on the way to becoming a candidate for EU membership. The last remaining ICTY fugitive, Goran Hadžic, a wartime leader of Serbs in Croatia, is unlikely to be a Mladic-type hurdle for Serbia. Nevertheless, Djelic said, the government will do its utmost to arrest Hadžic. He also stressed that the government will continue its efforts to reform the judiciary and to “eradicate” organised crime, two issues that are expected to gain in prominence now that the war-crimes question is close to resolution.

A former United Nations official who had regular dealings with Mladic at the time of the Srebrenica massacre said that it was a “good thing” that he had been caught. “If it’s taken 16 years, it’s still a good thing,” he said. And Djelic also saw a broader significance in the arrest. “Above all, I would like to stress that we see Mladic’s arrest as Serbia’s contribution to lasting regional reconciliation, something we owe to the innocent victims and to their families,” he said.